


Deus in Machina

by dehautdesert



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Body Horror, Body Modification, Child Abuse, Erik Logic Is The Best Logic, Gloriously Fucked Up, M/M, Mpreg, Mwa Ha Ha Ha Ha, Past Rape/Non-con, Person of Interest Fusion, Phone Sex, Poor Charles, Rape/Non-con Elements, Seriously this is fucked up, Technology And Shit, Telepathic Sex, Torture, Unethical Experimentation, character death (sort of)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-01-16
Updated: 2015-01-23
Packaged: 2018-03-07 20:56:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3182900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dehautdesert/pseuds/dehautdesert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The phone rings, and all sides; that pain-in-the-ass McCoy's team of semi-omniscient do-gooders, Stryker's horde of suit-and-sunglasses goons, and that maniac Sinister's band of psychos are fighting each other like the world will come to an end if they're not the one to answer that phone.</p><p>None of them see Erik coming until it's too late. Now he's become the living interface for 'Cerebro', the most powerful machine in the world. Cerebro sees everything, knows everything, and is programmed to identify threats to the already fragile peace between humans and mutants and report them to its assets. But Erik is beginning to wonder if it [if he?] is not also far, far more than that.</p><p>Loose 'Person of Interest' fusion with Root!Erik and Machine!Charles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Cerebro

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, time for the gigantic author preface of doom--feel free to skip if you're not that bothered about the type of things authors blather on about in their notes. As I said, this is a loose-ish fusion with Person of Interest (taking place right about at the end of season two and diverging sharply from there), with added mutant powers and Mpreg and stuff. You probably have to be familiar with at least the premise of POI to get it, but feel free to ask questions if there's something in particular you want to know.
> 
> (Also starring (at a rough approximation)... Finch!Hank, Reese!Alex, Zoe!Raven, Shaw!Logan, Carter!Darwin (except he lives 'cause everyone retains their mutant powers), Fusco!Angel, Leon!Sean, Northern Lights!Stryker/Trask, Decima!Sinister, Elias!Emma, Anthony!Azazel (he lives too!) and HR!Shaw. Also, the Man in Black was Nathan, Moira was Alisha Corwin (sorry, Moira), Janos was Cal Beecher (sorry, Janos) and Tony Stark is the rich playboy from that one episode where his car tries to kill him. And Bear is... 
> 
> Um... shit, we can't not have Bear! 
> 
> ... fuck it, Bear is Bear.)

 

*~*~*

 

RING-RING. RING-RING.

 

It was almost like something out of a movie. That scene where the protagonist wanders through the dark streets at night, past the payphones long fallen into disuse, when suddenly—the phone calls _him_. The shadowy and mysterious voice on the other side leads him into some bullshit conspiracy, Deep Throat pops by to let him know 'they' are watching before a red dot appears on his forehead and a sniper takes him out, and our hero must stop a corrupt corporate executive from chopping down a rainforest and save the life of the beautiful captive mad scientist's daughter.

(Who was the beautiful one in that sentence? The daughter, or the mad scientist?)

Somehow, though, this was what Erik's life had actually become.

RING-RING. RING-RING.

"GET THE PHONE, ARCLIGHT!"

Sinister's voice bellowed out from the other end of the long hall by the entrance, giving an order that wouldn't have sounded out of place coming from a nagging housewife. In response one of his creatures zapped all three of the suits that had been headed towards the ringing payphone on the floor above them. One of them fell over the side of the banister and hit the ground floor of the city library with a crack, the other two took considerably longer to roll down the wide marble staircase.

Erik took that time to reflect on how desperate McCoy must have been if he was allying his people with _Sinister_ of all people, even against Stryker—oh, no. Havoc had just hurled a red plasma bolt into the centre of Arclight's back, throwing him forward almost to the end of the entrance hall, and that meant there were three opposing sides here.

Four if you counted Erik.

So far he remained unseen, and hopefully he'd stayed far enough away while tracking Stryker that he wouldn't be expected by anyone there. With that relative safety assured, he leaned closer and increased the magnification on his viewer for an initial assessment of the situation below. Stryker had the numbers in his favour, but that was it as far as Erik could tell; ever since McCoy's little team of superheroes blasted his lab apart he hadn't had the resources to synthesise his mutant mind-control patches and ten-to-one odds against insects just meant it'd take a few seconds extra to swat the extra nine away.

"RRRRAAAAAARRRRRGH!"

The indomitable 'Wolverine' unleashed his catchphrase upon two said insects shooting at Havoc, followed swiftly by his claws. His team's NYPD pets were firing police-issue stun lasers at anyone who wasn't on their side; the dragonfly-girl from behind a bookshelf, Darwin out in the open where the bullets were ricocheting off his armoured body. There was a blue woman on their side as well, a shapeshifter firing a weapon from behind the next bookshelf along from the bug girl.

Was that Mystique? Erik tried to recall what the famous fixer looked like in her natural form, and he was pretty sure blue scales, red hair and 'naked' were all part of her signature. He knew she'd tangled with McCoy's people before, so he supposed they must have been sure employers. It made him wonder, and not for the first time, where McCoy got all his money anyway?

Speaking of, the final member of their team was McCoy himself, going head-to-head with another one of Sinister's mutants as Erik watched. He still had no idea what had precipitated this confrontation. The three sides had every reason to hate each other on principle, but right now there seemed to be some kind of target on each of their minds.

Something to do with that phone...

RING-RING. RING-RING.

Havoc almost made it to the ringing phone when the purple stretchy guy of Sinister's (Erik had never had cause to know his name before) made his own grab for it from across the room. The two of them collided and ended up grappling off the balcony and back down onto the ground floor; Wolverine catching Havoc just in time.

It was then one of the suited humans yelled through the carnage; "Sir, there are too many of them; we need to pull back!" Surprisingly clear, given so many bullets, laser blasts and Wolverines were flying about.

"Get to the phone, soldier!" Stryker bellowed. "That's an order, and you _will_ follow it at all costs! The fate of this entire nation depends on it!"

Fate of the _entire nation_?

And there Erik had assumed it was one of those 'one hundredth caller gets a free trip to Barbados' deals.

Well, if the fate of the entire nation was at stake, who was Erik to allow it to fall into the hands of the likes of Stryker or Sinister? Even after everything that had happened between them, he had to admit he owed McCoy as much as making sure that didn't occur.

Plus the thought of it simply left a bad taste in his mouth; those two were notorious in their exploitation of the mutant race—it was why Erik had been hunting Styker down to this location in the first place. He made the decision to pick off as many of Stryker's goons as he felt like from his position, leave the Scooby-gang to deal with Sinister's people—whom they just about outnumbered.

It was then that, over the sound of the gunshots and the distinctive whistle of the police lasers, Erik heard a flatter laser blast that came from Sinister's own weapon. McCoy dropped to the floor with a yell.

"Hank!" cried Mystique.

"BEAST!"

Wolverine roared and jumped away from the purple guy towards McCoy, but McCoy just snarled at him as he crawled away, dragging his leg behind himself, a blackened patch of thigh now smoking visibly.

"No, Logan!" he shouted. "We have to get to Cerebro before they do!"

Erik had had a baker's dozen metal spikes warped from door hinges and light fixtures on his floor floating above his head and ready to fly through Sinister and Stryker's sickening faces, but that one word made him hold his missiles in place.

There was a strange lightness in his head—or maybe his chest—when McCoy cried out 'Cerebro'. It was almost like his heart skipped a beat, and yet it wasn't an unpleasant feeling.

It was a feeling...

It was a feeling he couldn't remember the word for. Something he might have felt a long time ago, now long forgotten. Maybe there wasn't a word. But, almost without him noticing, his missiles circled around his head, fused, and stretched into a shield.

Even after all this time, the phone was still ringing.

RING-RING. RING-RING.

Wolverine had taken the words of his wounded employer to heart, though reluctantly, and with another 'RRRRAAAAAARRRRRGH!' made a running leap at the railing of the first floor. One of Stryker's people shot him somewhere on his torso, but being Wolverine he barely seemed to notice it, allowing the purple freak still fighting Havoc to be his springboard to the payphone.

Of course, he couldn't ignore it when he was suddenly hanging completely still in mid air.

"What!?"

Wolverine looked around wildly, sniffed, then yanked his head up and finally saw Erik.

"Magneto..." he growled. "What the hell are you doing here, bub?"

Erik smiled. "Thought I'd get that phone for you. Everyone else seems to be busy."

There was actually horror in Wolverine's eyes when he said that. It was an expression Erik had never seen on his face before, and it made that excited feeling spike in his chest.

"Over my dead body," Wolverine threatened.

"Oh, I could never kill you, Logan," Erik assured him, grinning. "Even if I did know how, I'd never find another playmate quite like you."

Wolverine unsheathed his claws.

"Why don't you come here and play with _these_ , you megalo—"

Seeing that as the perfect opportunity, Erik tossed Wolverine back across the room and into Sinister, who had been about to fire his weapon at him. Bullets bounced off his makeshift shield as more and more of the various combatants began to notice him, but he floated down to the first floor with hardly a care in the world.

RING-RING. RING-RING.

_"What the hell do you know about Cerebro!?"_

He knew nothing.

_Yet._

Distantly, Erik heard McCoy scream—"Magneto! NO!"

And, still grinning, he picked up the phone.

 

*~*~*

 

The world at large had become aware of mutants on September 11th, 2001, when a _thing_ that called itself 'Apocalypse' claimed responsibility for the destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York with a team of them at his side.

Erik had known then and there, sitting in a motel room outside of Geneva, looking up at a TV he'd only intended to have on as background noise while he placed drawing pins into a map of Europe, what would happen next. It hadn't mattered that the attack itself had been carried out by humans; a distraction for Apocalypse's larger plans, which thankfully ended up being thwarted. Nor did it make a difference that the other mutants under Apocalypse's command had, for the most part, been coerced or outright under mind control.

No, mutants were the enemy of man from that day forward, and as far as Erik was concerned would have been so even if their proverbial tumble out of the closet had been peaceful. Soon enough, he'd known, it would be all out war. A war he'd have wanted to fight.

As long as he found and dealt with Schmidt first, of course. There'd only been him left even then, and then he could work towards making sure what had happened to him never happened to any others of his kind, ever again.

War had been coming—he'd been sure of it. One last hard night of humanity before the new dawn, and the peace that would come when the more evolved species took their rightful place of dominion over the Earth.

Human kind had been over the second that first plane had struck the first tower. And Erik had had a duty to make sure the changeover resulted in as few deaths as possible; or so he'd been thinking at the time—he'd still needed to continue his mercenary work in order to collect the funds he'd required to hunt Schmidt, but perhaps if he took yet more work he could open other accounts whose funds would be stored for the new dawn?

That, he'd thought, would be the solution to everything.

At the same time, on the same day, thoughts of a very different nature had been running through a fourteen-year-old Hank McCoy's mind.

 

*~*~*

 

Fifteen days short of a round decade from that fateful event, Erik had had his first encounter with McCoy's band of Merry Men (and as it would later transpire, women) as his attempts to oust a pro-mutant registration Mayor of New York from government (by ousting his fat head from his shoulders) were thwarted by a harsh red laser beam collapsing the stage the Mayor had been standing on before the blade could reach his neck.

Erik had constructed that blade from the fused material of steel pins that had been attached to over five hundred campaign buttons the Mayor's office had given out. A fitting gesture, he'd thought. Even denying their kind the simple poetry of that justice, never mind the actual justice, had been a sin as far as he'd been concerned.

He remembered standing there, floating ten feet or so above a lawn of grass far too green to be real, cluttered with bleach-white chairs knocked over in their occupants' haste to flee as smoke and debris finally tainted the false cleanliness of the place before the blood Erik had been planning for that job could be spilled. A flag pole and the stars and stripes flying from it had fallen over a few seconds after mostly everything had gone quiet and snapped Erik out of his stunned silence long enough for him to look for whoever had dared get in his way.

Imagine his surprise when that fatheaded oaf's saviour turned out to be not a private security detail with a previously unheard of weapon, but young man entirely unaffiliated with the office. A fellow mutant at that.

"Don't get me wrong," the moody blond kid had told him, and either he'd been trying to sound cool or he'd desperately needed a throat lozenge; "I think the guy's an idiot. But he was elected fair and square according to the laws and constitution of this country, and I do consider myself a patriot if nothing else."

The sincerity in his voice had not been very strong. But there'd been truth spoken in his jest nonetheless.

Umpteen different types of weapon Erik could have used to kill that kid there and then had come to mind. Probably should have been put to use too. But he'd been a mutant, and therefore a brother, and frankly Erik had admired his courage—especially at such a young age.

"Forgive me if I find your jingoistic feelings for a nation that hates and fears our kind simply for being different to be somewhat misplaced, kid."

He'd put emphasis on that last word. _I'm older than you, and I know better_ , he'd meant to imply.

The kid had snorted.

"Dude, I don't know about me, but they don't hate and fear you for being different. They hate and fear you 'cause you're constantly trying to kill them."

"What do you know about me?" Erik had asked; probably with more viciousness than he'd have liked because the answer shouldn't have been anything other than 'nothing'. He'd been quite careful to cover his tracks over the years.

Instead, the kid had boasted, "Everything."

Then there'd been a pause, and the kid had frowned as though someone had told him something that didn't make sense. It had taken a while for Erik to see it—there'd been no metal in the ear bud the kid had been using to communicate, so someone involved in that operation had a brain, and considerable resources—but that interloper had indeed been talking with a partner.

"Okay, so not everything," the kid had then amended. "But we have heard of you, Magneto. And we're going to stop you from killing Mayor Nixon."

A dozen things could have happened then. A billion.

Erik would have won any physical fight with almost absolute certainty; his opponent was clearly not as skilled with using his power as Erik, and even if he had been, Erik hadn't seen that said power had had the speed it needed to block an attack of small projectiles from all sides, as Erik had been capable of bestowing upon him.

He was pretty sure he could have bested the kid in a war of words as well, provided the kid had the faculties to meet him on an even playing field of logic—had he not those faculties, (as so often was the case, in Erik's experience) he'd never have been able to understand that he was already beaten, and might have gone on beating a dead horse until Erik got fed up and left, and Erik hated it when that happened.

But what actually happened had been this:

"Freeze, Havoc! You're under arrest!"

Eyebrows rising up into his forehead, Erik had been surprised any cop had gotten there that fast; especially one who apparently knew his opponent's name, and especially one whose immediate instinct was to attack the Batman-wannabe—then comically wincing before him—and not Erik. But the voice had come from behind Erik, so he hadn't seen who'd said it at first; just heard the lack of tolerance for fucking around in his tone.

The kid had forced a smirk.

"Detective Munoz," he'd muttered. Then, quieter, "A little help, Beast?"

There'd been a short pause, and then the kid had rolled his eyes. Erik had been admittedly intrigued by this interloper by this point, and had decided to hold back a while to see how it was going to play out, just as 'Havoc' had muttered to himself with annoyance.

"Great idea, bozo. Thanks a lot."

"Hands above your head! I see enough red to light up so much as a matchbox from you, I shoot."

To his consternation Erik had noticed then that someone in Munoz's department had been just as prepared as 'someone' in 'Havoc's circle. Erik couldn't tell precisely where the voice behind him had been coming from, because the detective hadn't had any metal on his person. Not even a weapon.

That had weakened his curiosity with a sharp influx of healthy paranoia. How had both Havoc and Munoz known not to have anything metal on their person when they'd arrived at this scene?

It had begun to smell like a set up. But by who? The two men clearly hadn't been on the same side.

"Darwin," Havoc had replied warily, "you have to trust me when I tell you that this time we're on the same side."

"The side of some god damned vigilante and his mysterious benefactor?" Munoz had thrown back, voice scathing. "I have a _job_ to do, Havoc. I can't let you walk."

"Right now Magneto is the real enemy. He's going to kill Nixon if we don't stop him."

Two things had been paramount in Erik's mind at that point. Firstly his wondering where said Nixon had slithered off to in this chaos—he couldn't feel the watch he'd been using to track him so he'd probably left the area and been on his way to somewhere safe by that point—no matter, Erik had thought, he'd just catch up to him another time.

More importantly at that moment; how the fuck had this kid and his 'benefactor' known what Erik had been about to do?

He'd been careful, and with the powers at his disposal he hadn't even needed to be. The press conference held for Nixon's acceptance speech had hardly been a secret, after all; he'd just needed to know a little regarding the security and the preparations had been done. And who could have known he'd had the information given to him by Emma Frost?

The security firm in question had anti-telepathic measures in place precisely because they'd felt Emma Frost and her criminal empire had been a possible threat, but then they hadn't known that at the time she'd been partnered with HC, the darker side of the police force; obtaining the information from them and whoever their boss was.

As for the money, that should have been untraceable. Erik would have done this one for free, but Emma's offer had been most attractive, and she was nothing if not careful.

So how had they known?

"You. You're under arrest too, you know! Put your hands in the air and get your feet on the damn ground, you're not exactly disproving Nixon's 'dangerous mutants' shit."

A sympathiser? Erik hadn't the patience to find out if that was in truth or in name only (though as a member of the NYPD, in name only had been his first guess) and had lowered himself to the ground with a quick look at the man addressing him.

Tall, black, good-looking—and standing about twelve metres south-south-east of him.

"Keep your eyes front!"

It had been all he'd needed to know.

"Darwin!"

The man named Havoc had seen Erik's purpose too late—so he had thought—and Erik had foreseen no possible complication in magnetically throwing the blade he'd intended for Kelly at the head of the meddlesome police officer.

It had flown through the air true; like a boomerang, and in a split-second sunk into the vulnerable flesh on Darwin's neck...

... too late to thwart the carbon armour that materialised to deflect it.

Perhaps the man had been sincere in his sympathy for the mutant cause after all, he'd thought.

Just as the shield he'd hastily constructed for himself crashed into his body with the force of a plasma burst that had been far, far stronger than Erik had anticipated.

 

*~*~*

 

Emma Frost had come to visit him in the hospital.

Her right-hand man Azazel had teleported her past the lockdown with ease. _He'd_ already been a wanted man, so there'd been no point in wearing a disguise (as much as a mutant with his distinctive look could ever be disguised), but Emma had been cloaked to hide herself from the cameras.

Cloaked all in white. Because they'd all know it was her anyway, they just wouldn't be and never were able to prove it.

"Nasty burns, sugar," she'd remarked, lip curling with distaste. "Who'd have thought simple humans could have done this to the famous Magneto?"

Erik had snorted, and tried not to wince at the pain even that slight movement had brought him.

"No humans. Third party involvement from a kid who seems to think he's a superhero. I heard him referred to, and quite accurately in my opinion, as 'Havoc'."

The irritation in Emma's face had been oddly fond when she'd heard that name.

"Dear little Alex," she'd sighed. "A knight in shining armour in a world of ruin. It seems chivalry isn't quite as dead as I'd like it to be."

A half second after she'd said that, she'd abruptly scowled and turned towards Azazel.

"I would _not_ miss him too much to kill him!" she'd insisted.

Azazel had held her gaze innocently. "I didn't say anything."

Emma had tapped her head to make the point then turned back to Erik.

"Havoc and his associates have become something of a legend in certain quarters of this city. You're from out of town so you wouldn't have known that. I apologise for not considering the possibility of his involvement."

"He packs quite a punch," Erik had said, grimacing. "Any ideas on how he knew about our plans?"

The frustration in Emma's eyes had been unmistakable, despite her efforts to conceal it.

"I'm pretty sure they don't have a telepath, or I'd know about them," she'd told him. "I haven't been able to figure out what his partner's mutation is, assuming he _is_ a mutant, but my working theory is a precognitive; a more powerful one than any I've heard about before. I also know they have friends in the NYPD that HC would love to know the identities of. You didn't happen to see anyone else there, did you?"

Erik had given her his best grin.

"Just the boy," he'd said.

Why had he said it?

He didn't really know for sure. Maybe he hadn't liked the idea of Emma Frost expecting him to do her work for her like one of her lackeys, or maybe he'd felt bad that he'd attacked Detective Munoz, a fellow mutant, with intent to kill—simply taking for granted that he'd been human when he'd flung that blade that could very well have killed him had his mutation not happened to exist just for that type of occasion.

Maybe he'd just kind of liked those kids.

 

*~*~*

 

Whether he grew to like them more or less as time had passed was debateable.

Nixon was only the first job they ended up ruining for him—and sure, the man had revised his opinions on mutants after two had saved his life; that was all very well and good, but hardly to Erik's satisfaction, even if Emma had backed off. Besides, he had a reputation to uphold.

So when, five months later, he'd found himself hiding in the en suite of the office of the Secretary of Defence because he'd sensed a walking metal skeleton coming towards him, he'd been surprised to find the skeleton accompanied by his old friend Havoc.

And charmed to find the skeleton encased in a slightly sociopathic bad-tempered Canadian who had absolutely no concept of what it meant to pick his battles.

That time the encounter had ended with no one in hospital (though he imagined Havoc had had to do some quick thinking to get Wolverine out of the wall), but it had made him decide to track their silent partner down once and for all and find out how he always seemed to know so much.

That had been how he'd met Hank McCoy. And how he'd been bitten by Hank McCoy's pet dog, but he preferred to gloss over that part.

(seriously, they had a pet dog? Who were they trying to be, the Superfriends?)

Hank McCoy was not a precognitive, as it turned out, though he'd been content to allow Erik to continue under that misapprehension while they'd had a very interesting chat about ethics.

"I'm surprised you didn't know I was coming."

"My abilities can't show me how to avoid one future without possibly creating an even worse one, Mr. Lensherr. My priority is this case was Havoc's safety. Wolverine can heal from just about anything; he can't."

"So your future told you that if you tried to use Havoc to stop me from taking you, I would kill him?"

"It was a definite possibility."

McCoy had shifted around in the armchair, but Erik had been pretty sure the chains he'd used were strong enough to hold him. The sight of it had bothered him though—with such a dramatic physical mutation all over the other man's body his being in chains should only have ever been the work of prejudiced, amoral humans, and yet those were the people McCoy seemed to be fighting for, so how could Erik not have resorted to this?

"How noble of you," he'd said, after the pause he'd taken to acclimate himself to being the one to put one of his own kind in chains. _You didn't start this_ , he'd reminded himself. _They interfered in your business first, and twice now at that_. "To be looking out for your fellow mutants. It does make me wonder how you think protecting their oppressors is conducive to that goal."

"Isn't that funny?" McCoy had said, and he'd been trying so hard to be brave. "I've been equally lead to wonder what you think trying to start a _war_ is going to accomplish for our kind."

Of course Erik had understood why someone might fear a war—they'd probably have had to have been damaged somehow to not fear war; damaged as Erik had been. And yet, though he knew the damage that had been done gave him almost an unfair advantage in accepting the course that had to be taken, he also had to maintain expectation that others of his kind could overcome that fear and understand the benefit of a war fought on their terms if given the opportunity.

"A war is coming one way or the other," he'd explained. "Better we seize the advantage in being the aggressors—especially with our side being smaller."

" _Our_ side?" McCoy had said incredulously. "We're not on the same side, Lensherr. We don't want the same things."

"Wanting the same things do not make 'sides'," Erik had argued. "Blood makes a side. Brotherhood. Nation. Commonalities that unite people who would otherwise have nothing to do with one another."

"Unities that make wars possible. If humanity is evolving beyond what it once was, I believe it can evolve past that too."

"But most of humanity is the same as it ever was. Only _we_ are changing, and for the world you want, those relics of days past must be reduced to just that. Relics."

"Those I see as relics, and those I see as the future are not divided by whether they are human or mutant."

That had been the first inkling Erik had had that McCoy could not actually see the future.

"Is that the future your ability shows you?" he'd asked. "Or do you see instead the war that humanity will wage against us?"

There. The second he'd said 'your ability' the fear in McCoy's eyes had spiked, almost imperceptibly, but Erik had been practiced in looking for such things.

"I thought you planned on being the one to wage that war."

"So you do see war?"

And there. McCoy had averted his eyes for just a moment. It had just about amounted to a 'three strikes' scenario. Erik had made his mind up and tightened the chains around McCoy further, causing him difficulty breathing, except around his lower left arm where he loosened the chains to allow more movement instead.

"I've seen several possibilities," McCoy had choked out.

"A future that becomes less certain the further into it you see?" The only other precognitive he'd known had been like that. "And conversely, I imagine, the closer the event you see, the more accurate your prediction of it?"

There. A slight hesitation before the nod that had been McCoy's response.

With that Erik had summoned a metal pen into his hand from the desk opposite and jammed it through the back of McCoy's hand and into the cushioned arm of the chair beneath it in a single, fluid movement.

"If you had really been a precog, you would have known I was going to put that pen through your hand _before_ I'd done it. Where is the real precog?"

McCoy hadn't screamed. Erik had been fast enough that it had taken him a moment to realise just what he'd done, and then he'd seemed too shocked to do anything but stare and gasp for breath. When Erik had then pulled the pen out just as quickly, McCoy had made a strangled sound that evolved into a low moan and gazed up at him; fear, shock, and amongst all that _betrayal_ —and that had stung, despite all their enmity—on his so beautiful a face.

Erik hadn't relished causing him pain, even as the stupidity of the man had made him rage. With his inhuman features, striking colouring, and all that lovely fur Erik could only think that McCoy had to have suffered more than most at the whims of humanity's cruelty. Some of their people with such arresting countenances escaped that cruelty by inspiring too much fear for human mice to brave assaulting them, but anyone could tell McCoy lacked the self confidence to inspire that kind of fear in all but the most cowardly of humans.

And yet he'd clenched his fists, scowled at the blood that welled up around the wound and shaken his head at Erik as if to tell him 'No'; that he would not give away that member of their team. No matter what Erik did.

He could have done more than he'd ended up doing, if it hadn't felt so wrong, he supposed. But after that he'd mostly restrained himself to tightening the chains—even dressing and wrapping the wound he'd made with the pen. He hadn't expected just how affected he could be seeing one of his own people suffer at _his_ hands.

He also hadn't expected how resourceful Havoc and Wolverine would be when it came to tracking down where he'd taken McCoy.

"Looks like we have company," he remembered muttering softly. "Another time, perhaps?"

"You're just going to leave?"

It had been difficult for McCoy to speak by then, but he'd managed it. He was a very strong man, all things considered.

"Make no mistake, Beast," he'd said; using the man's mutant name as a term of respect. "If you and your people continue to interfere in my plans, I will come for you, and eventually I will find the mutant you use to get your information. You might show that hand to them and ask them if your life is really worth what they're trying to do."

To his surprise, McCoy had managed a small chuckle.

"You don't understand a thing," he'd said.

Perhaps he hadn't.

Perhaps McCoy shouldn't have left that challenge open for him to meet.

So, half convinced McCoy would actually die before he revealed his secrets, half thankful for the easy out of his moral dilemma, Erik had left as soon as he'd heard the police car pull up and watched from downwind as Havoc and Wolverine had helped McCoy into Munoz's—by then no longer keeping up the pretence of trying to bring Havoc to justice—and his partner's car.

It had been kind of sweet, hearing Wolverine snarl, "Don't you worry, beastie. We're going to get you fixed right up, and then Havoc and me are going to make Eisenhardt into a string of German sausages..."

For a split second he'd prepared to laugh.

And then he'd realised they'd referred to him by the name of a dead boy they couldn't possibly have known existed, and his blood had gone cold.

Increased surveillance on his part would reveal that those five; McCoy, Havoc, Wolverine, Darwin and the other officer with the dragonfly wings were pretty much the entire operation, apart from occasional outsourcing to Mystique, and she wasn't a precognitive either. None of them were.

So how had they been getting their information!?

 

*~*~*

 

A few whispered words he'd overheard at Alkali Lake had been the only clue he'd had before he'd decided to accept the payphone call that everyone had seemed to want so badly.

It had been a desperate encounter indeed; when even Wolverine, much as he'd been dying to insert as much adamantium into Erik as he'd had injected into him (via the less sophisticated but eminently simpler claws-to-the-guts method) for what he'd done to McCoy, had admitted they'd have to work together to get themselves and Bolivar Trask's victims out of the mess they'd been in then.

So many brother and sister mutants violated and forced against their own kind for further violation at the hands of greedy humans. So many humans, standing by and letting it happen, revelling in the helplessness of those they feared.

So many memories of so similar a place, boiling beneath the ordered surface of Erik's mind.

"Why has Cerebro never brought this place to our attention!?"

He'd heard Havoc hiss that question to McCoy when he'd thought they'd been alone. Seen him looking out to make sure even Munoz and the bug girl weren't within earshot.

McCoy had shaken his head sadly.

"You know there are two lists, Alex. Something on this scale would have appeared on the primary threat list, and I..." He'd gulped. "The people who are responsible for taking care of that list are the people who are responsible for Alkali Lake in the first place."

"But Cerebro has alerted our attention to people Northern Lights has tried to kill before!" Havoc had shot back, and gotten right in McCoy's face. "What about Logan? Or Forge?"

"Logan and Forge were in imminent danger of death, not experimentation. According to Trask's files only a few of the mutants he brought here have actually died; the rest are being used as puppets, and those who did die had been here for months beforehand—their trails would have gone long cold before we got their number. We're only here now because Cerebro decided _Magneto's_ life was in danger... God. I can understand why you're angry, Alex, this is exactly what I was afraid of from the start, and after Moira..."

"Hey. This isn't your fault," Havoc had told him.

Then—

"You taking a nap, bub?"

So focussed on that enigmatic conversation had Erik been that he hadn't heard Wolverine enter the room behind him until he'd unsheathed his claws and asked that question. Erik had almost sent a filing cabinet into his side.

"What's Cerebro?" he'd asked him, casually.

Wolverine had looked at him like he'd just told him he'd murdered his girlfriend or something, and he hadn't been in the best of moods even before that.

"What the hell do you know about Cerebro!?"

"Logan."

McCoy had noticed him by that point, and he'd given Erik a strange and serious look that he hadn't seen on him since he'd been tightening chains around his ribs in a rental cabin three months before.

"I suggest, Mr. Eisenhardt, that if you put any value whatsoever on your life and the continuation of your cause, you'll forget you ever heard that word."

And that had put a lid on that. McCoy's demeanour had been so unusually intense that Erik hadn't been able to refuse him. Besides, there'd been more important things to worry about at the time.

But Erik hadn't forgotten, of course. How could he? His mind had overflown with possibilities.

Was Cerebro a mutant? A machine? Something else entirely?

Why couldn't they have reported the atrocity at Alkali Lake before? What was holding them back? Were they really working for Stryker and Trask, and if so, why, when they seemed to be connected to McCoy? What were the lists McCoy had mentioned and why had he feared this happening? Did Cerebro work for him or did he work for Cerebro?

What was going on?

 

*~*~*

 

...

"Hello?"

Everything on the floor below Erik; the guns, the yelling, the sound of adamantium screeching along the floor, it all went abruptly quiet and still as soon as he'd spoken into the receiver. Even the very breathing of the men below seemed to still and cease, while they waited like deer in headlights for whatever this turn of events portended.

The pause that followed, filled faintly with the tiniest whisper of static on the other end of the line, had to have been broken sooner than the eternity Erik felt he waited before he heard Him for the very first time.

" _Can you hear me_?"

The voice on the other end of the line was male, a youngish-sounding adult with an upper-class English accent. He spoke calmly and almost robotically, but somehow, even after saying only two words, Erik felt it was a person he was talking to.

"Yes," he said. "I can hear you."

" _State designation._ "

"Erik Lensherr," said Erik, without thinking.

" _Searching records for vocal identity_ ," said the voice. " _Searching. Searching_ —"

He sounded like an AI. _It_ sounded like an AI.

_He._

Because he sounded real too.

"Stop him!" shrieked Sinister suddenly— _desperately_. "Stop him now, you fools! He'll ruin everything!"

" _Voice print confirmed. Designation 054-18-6434-M, Erik Lensherr. Alias Magneto. Alias Max Eisenhardt. DOB: 16 07 1978. Delta-One-Seven 241005. New administrator accepted. User action required._ "

User action required? Well, that rather put him on the spot.

There were a million ways he could have responded to the voice. A thousand orders he could have given it. A thousand questions he could have asked it. A thousand witty one-liners he could have made.

But then the voice said; " _Six o'clock_."

And what actually happened was that Havoc blew half the wall in front of him up and the line went dead.

Only, despite the burn that kissed the back of his hand, he knew that didn't matter. Erik could tell from the quick glimpse he got of McCoy's face as he was floating away from him to make his exit--resigned and wincing with pain--that it was too late now. Whatever 'it' entailed.

Too late for any of the others anyway. Erik now had the chance to find out just what exactly 'Cerebro' was.

Or 'who', as the case may have been.

 

*~*~*

 

Ever since that day at Alkali Lake Erik had spent most of his time trying to track down Stryker and bring him to justice ( _Erik's_ justice, which in this case called for more than a quick decapitation) for what he'd perpetrated there; amongst other, numerous crimes against the Mutant race.

But he hadn't had no time at all to think about 'Cerebro'. In fact, he'd thought about the name and who it might have belonged to quite a lot.

 _'Brain'_. A mutant. A machine. An alien. A god. All of the above.

All he really knew was that Cerebro had intelligence enough to predict murders and assassinations, was probably on the side of McCoy and could reasonably be said to align with his principles for that reason, but was not in his possession or control. Was powerful enough that its existence had to be kept secret and now was to some extent Erik's to command.

Also he probably was a machine after all. Probably. He spoke like one, sounded... just inhuman enough not to be human, and yet just human enough for Erik to think of him as 'him' and not 'it'.

The burn on the back of his hand stung. It was with some relish that he realised Havoc had now been responsible for more of the scars on his body than anyone else but Schmidt. He relished it because Havoc was a mutant, and this was a mark of their superiority.

Though it still hurt. It would need to be dressed once he was in relative safety. He almost wondered if the placement of the wound had been deliberate on Havoc's part, as it was right where he'd put the pen through McCoy.

When a slightly tinny version of the beginning of the Spice Girls' song 'Wannabe' started playing somewhere on the bus Erik was taking to 'anywhere but the vicinity of Stryker and Sinister' after floating himself out of the building, he'd at first assumed some idiot passenger thought it was ironically funny to set such an abomination as their ring tone.

Then the middle-aged man in the trench coat next to him tapped his shoulder hesitantly.

"I think it's yours, pal," he said.

His? He'd never have... His cell was supposed to be on silent—wait. Those vibrations in his pocket...

It _was_ his.

The look on his face must have said it all, because one member of a gaggle of black teens opposite him laughed and said—

"Aw, man—someone changed your tune without you knowing; that's cold!"

Erik rolled his eyes and brought his phone out of his pocket, a little embarrassed that he hadn't realised it was his phone ringing from the vibrations of the metal within the device, and a lot embarrassed that his phone was playing a Spice Girls song in public.

The caller ID simply read: ' _X_ '.

And there were five missed calls from them over the past hour since his escape.

"Hello?" he said, trying not to sound too murderous. Who the hell could have—

" _Administrator Erik Lensherr accepted. User action required_."

There was that feeling back again. That excitement, excitement that wasn't the same as he felt when he was fighting for his people, or for vengeance. That feeling of...

...of connection.

His heart began to beat faster. His breathing became heavy. He must have spent an inordinate amount of time sitting there with a silent phone to his ear like an idiot, unable to think of anything to say.

Finally, it came to him.

"Well, the first thing you can do is change my ring tone back to what it was."

How on earth had they managed to do that anyway?

" _Invalid response. User action required._ "

It had been worth a try.

"What sort of action?"

" _User action_."

Erik rolled his eyes and stood up so he could keep some distance from members of the public, something he felt at this point was probably a good idea.

"So whatever you are, you're a smart-arse. Good to know. I hope this is worth getting on Sinister's bad side. He's probably tracking me down as we speak."

" _Valid._ "

What?

"You mean he _is_ tracking me down?"

" _Valid._ "

"You know this for sure?"

" _Valid_."

"And how, exactly, do you know this?"

A pause.

" _All systems are functioning to design specifications_."

Erik felt himself go weak in the knees.

"And what are your design specifications?" he asked softly.

There was a little bit more of a pause before the voice answered this time. The bus lurched as it went around a corner.

" _This system was designed to protect and preserve life_."

'To protect and preserve life'.

Something that seemed so benevolent at first glance. And yet it wouldn't have taken a mind anywhere near as sharp as Erik's to realise just how vague that answer was; how many millions of interpretations Cerebro could have of its own purpose—from that of an impotent do-gooder to totalitarian overlord.

However, at the same time, the moral concerns Erik might have had with such a poorly-defined mission were not first and foremost on his mind. They should have been. Erik had long discarded notions of a purpose in his life beyond the perpetuation of his cause. But right now he found himself wanting to know more about Cerebro the... well, not 'person', he supposed, but... 'entity', than he was interested in the philosophy of his designer.

Two questions, therefore, had to follow that vague answer. The first was how exactly he was designed to do so. The second was who had designed him that way, though Erik had the feeling he already knew the answer to that one, so he asked it first.

"Who by?"

" _Three o'clock_."

It was fortunate Erik did have that sharp mind, as it turned out, because he remembered that odd 'six o'clock' Cerebro had said to him just before Havoc's blast had singed the edge of his cape off. He turned his head to the side just in time to see the rocket launched towards the bus.

The _plastic_ rocket.

 

*~*~*

 

...

...

[OPENING FILES]

...

[ACCESSING RECORDS]

[19/03/2013/AUDIO RECORDING/SINISTER/VERTIGO/00:13/]

...

...

VERTIGO: Vertigo.

...

SINISTER: Where are you!?

...

VERTIGO: Sir! Was the operation a success?

...

SINISTER: No, it was not a success, you imbecile! There was outside interference; someone other than Stryker or Havoc—if you're on-site I need you to find out everything there is to know about a metal-kinetic mutant who goes by the name of 'Magneto'.

...

VERTIGO: Yes, sir.

...

SINISTER: The system rebooted as expected though; so at least we were right about that. Were there any complications with the biological component?

...

VERTIGO: No, sir. Asset X was clinically dead for less than thirty seconds, and revived with minimal effort. The foetus also looks healthy.

...

SINISTER: Good. I wouldn't have wanted to try and interface Legion with Cerebro at this stage.

...

VERTIGO: Speaking of which, Sir, some damage was done to the nursery when Asset X shut down. We believe Legion somehow sensed the interference and responded negatively.

...

SINISTER: Were any of the other subjects harmed?

...

VERTIGO: No. Nightcrawler escaped into another part of the building and we haven't found him yet, but that's hardly anything new. The twins were in an induced sleep, so they missed the whole thing.

...

SINISTER: And Storm?

...

VERTIGO: Good as gold all day, Sir.

...

SINISTER: I suppose we must be thankful for small mercies. Now the entire system rests in the hands of a complete unknown, anything could happen.

...

VERTIGO: Perhaps not that unknown after all, Sir.

...

SINISTER: What do you mean?

...

VERTIGO: That name you gave me? Magneto? He's already in our database from the samples we received from Shaw in '95. And you're not going to believe this...

 

*~*~*

 


	2. 'X'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Greetings, readers, and thank you to everyone who's left kudos. In this Chapter, Erik continues to wonder what he's gotten himself into when 'Cerebro' (who apparently doesn't want to be called Cerebro) leads him into a very strange situation. Meanwhile, Stryker calls Trask, and McCoy and his team discuss their options and go to face their fates--which for some of them involve a reunion with a certain playboy billionaire... 
> 
> This Chapter has everything from attempted infanticide to a lack of road safety with hot talking action in between. Next week, Erik (and others) will begin to understand in detail about what's going on.

 

*~*~*

 

"Well. Now that that's over with."

Blending into the chaos of a couple hundred frightened humans crowding around a bus that had suddenly floated into the middle of a busy metropolis, dodging almost a dozen plastic missiles launched their way and then dismantled itself when Erik couldn't be bothered to wait to access the door to get out, was much easier than floating a bus into the centre of a busy metropolis whilst dodging almost a dozen plastic missiles and then dismantling it because he couldn't be bothered to wait for access to the door.

His phone had been relegated to his pocket while he took care of the two of Stryker's goons who had attacked him, and with the inconvenience of that method of communication in mind he'd made his way to the nearest place offering the sale of electronics and found himself a hands-free device. Of course, Cerebro had called him back before he'd had a chance to take it out of its packaging. He'd picked up just as the sky had begun to lighten and the streets fill with the first workers of the day.

And in this new light, the first thing he noticed was that Cerebro had somehow also changed his phone's background.

To a grumpy-looking Persian kitten.

Smart-arse.

"You know, I have a feeling that among your no doubt near-infinite number of capabilities, the capability to get on my nerves is going to be the one you display the most."

" _Administrator Erik Lensherr must be protected_ ," the soothing voice told him.

"Protected?"

The notion seemed absurd, even if one assumed Cerebro was changing the subject and not suggesting that the grumpy kitten background was for Erik's protection. It had been a lifetime since anyone had given a thought to 'protecting' Erik. The voice was serious about it, though.

" _Seek a place of safety_."

Erik could even have laughed at that one. A place of safety? On this planet?

"Always good advice." He gave the other voice his sarcasm cheerfully, as though he was talking to an old friend; or at least that was how he imagined people talked to their friends, when they had them—he'd seen something of that nature on a TV show once. "I don't suppose you have any ideas in that regard?"

The voice paused. Then—

" _Three hundred yards. Turn right_."

"So you're a sat-nav too? Next you'll be telling me you can make cappuccino."

No answer.

"I offended you," Erik said, grinning. "You have my most sincere apologies. Now, before the humans fired at us I believe I asked you who your designer was?"

Another pause.

" _That information is not available_."

Cerebro's answer didn't deter Erik in the slightest. It didn't even surprise him.

"By which I can only assume you mean Hank McCoy. I wouldn't worry about me knowing that, I'm well aware that that isn't his real name. You're the one who tells him when people are going to be in trouble? How useful. What preceded the occasion of your phone call to the library, Cerebro?"

" _Designation invalid. This system is not Cerebro._ "

That stopped Erik in his tracks. He couldn't help but respond with precisely the first thought he had to that answer.

"I don't understand."

Pause.

The pauses in between Cerebro—or not-Cerebro, apparently—'s answers to his questions admittedly raised suspicions in Erik, suspicions that he was talking to a liar constantly pausing to think of a line to sell him before he spoke; but there was another feeling mixed within that.

Anticipation. What he was talking to... he hadn't had the chance to properly think through what the existence of this entity might mean, didn't have that chance even now, but he knew it was something amazing. Something amazing that was speaking to _him_.

With every word it said, he became more eager to hear the next one.

" _Two hundred seventy-five yards. Turn right_."

The voice didn't want to explain its rejection of the name 'Cerebro', or had been forbidden from it; Erik didn't know which. Its tone remained the same calm, pleasant tone as it ever was. He hurried to find a different way to probe its mysteries.

"Well, if you're not Cerebro, I don't suppose there's something I can call you?"

" _Step right_."

At once Erik recognised the words not as a reply to his question but as a suggestion—or command, depending on who truly held the power in their relationship, something Erik was at this point unsure of and almost hopeful that there would be no simple answer to. As for the imperative, a quick glance to his left let Erik know why the voice had said what he had; he lurched to the side just as a speeding cab powered through a puddle that had collected at the side of the curb and sprayed the sidewalk with filthy cold water.

Pure loathing seeped into Erik's mind in an instant, the kind of contempt so unworthy of his time he could almost have scolded himself for letting it get to him, and yet at the same time he found such actions a microcosm of the wider issues of society and couldn't help but read into them enough to feel the way he did.

"That was rude," Erik murmured.

And, despite the voice's warning, a few drops had spattered across the cuff of his left trouser leg. Erik only needed to glance down at the stain and without a thought he felt for the car with his powers; felt the frame, the wheels, the engine and everything attached. He picked out the licence plate and the screws that held it to the cab in half a second, warped all four of them out of their holes in another half and with that done the plate fell from the speeding vehicle and onto the asphalt, bouncing and turning over twice before it came to a halt in the middle of the road.

Erik never had compunctions about taking vengeance, even minor vengeance like this, on humans who dared treat him without the respect that was his desert. He sometimes liked to imagine divine retribution worked through him in these moments—and more so the more the vengeance was deserved. Not 'divine' in the sense that he believed the God of Abraham was on his side; he'd always have a soft spot for Jewish culture, but he certainly no longer considered himself a believer.

No, the divinity he imagined was something far more... disembodied than an anthropomorphic deity. A kind of universal justice that humanity too often diverged from; that mutants had come to set right, in ways both big and minor.

But apparently the voice did not share his particular faith.

" _Administration error_ ," he said, no more than another half-second after the plate went 'clunk' against the asphalt. " _Erik Lensherr has performed an illegal operation. Minor vandalism and obstruction of a public road_."

Erik snorted. "Send out the SWAT teams, why don't you?" he teased. "Don't tell me this is the kind of thing you bother McCoy with? Not that I can't see Havoc roaming the streets and blasting plasma into the kneecaps of the city's jaywalkers, but I would have thought there were more important things on your mind."

" _Category F crimes are categorised as non-relevant in both primary and secondary operations. Their occurrence is not reported_."

"Yes, I thought that might be the case. But how did you know that was what I did? Emma always thought you were a mutant with some kind of powerful psionic ability, but talking to you one would be hard pressed to believe you were anything but an AI." ( _and yet..._ ) "So you must have some means of surveillance. Satellite? CCTV? Do you have access to all of it?"

A thought hit him and sent a chill down his spine that almost made him stop walking.

Was there anything this entity didn't have access to?

The voice answered—

" _Erik Lensherr may use the designation 'X' in reference to this system._ "

Again, and even after such a disturbing thought as he'd had prior to hearing that, Erik couldn't help but laugh a little. He wondered how much of his time was going to be spent trying to figure out which of his questions 'X' was answering at any given moment. A part of him almost relished the challenge, and the idea that so much effort was being made for his benefit.

"Well, ' _X_ ', it's nice to meet you. You may call me 'Magneto'."

Though he kind of liked hearing X call him 'Erik', for now they were still acting in a professional capacity and he intended for things to remain that way. Profession was his purpose now, after all. That and X was an AI he'd exchanged about a dozen sentences with, so why the hell had he even considered allowing it _familiarity_ with him?!

" _Updating threat alert_ ," said X, putting Erik in a different frame of mind at once. " _Primary operational assessment—irrelevant. Secondary operational assessment—relevant. Violence imminent. User action required. Two hundred yards. Turn right_."

"What?"

" _Violence imminent. Two hundred yards. Turn right_."

Did X's voice change just then, or had Erik only imagined him sounding a touch... worried? A swift glance in every direction didn't reveal any obvious threat, but that possible hint of fear on X's part and knowing X hadn't steered him wrong so far made Erik break into a run.

No one paid him much notice. It wasn't the best part of town and Erik had always found few humans had the capacity to see how much of the world lay beyond their own petty lives, even if it was staring them right in the face. Even when the realities of such a world crept into their field of vision, how many of them actually saw more of that reality than what pertained to them and how it did so?

One of the girls they'd gotten out of Alkali Lake alive had had the power to alter a person's perception just enough that they couldn't see her if they didn't actively know she was there. Why, Erik wondered, would anyone need to develop such an ability when so few were going to notice them anyway?

" _One hundred yards. Turn right_."

The sky was overcast and grey. It was the fourth day of poor weather, all anyone had ever talked about within his earshot for as many days, until he'd found the dream team at the library. It said something, he supposed, that he wasn't really close enough to anyone anymore that they'd talk to him about anything more meaningful.

Except McCoy, Havoc, and Wolverine. But that was generally a mix of taunting and philosophical debate spat at him while he was causing them grievous bodily harm, and somehow that didn't make for fond remembrance, even if the conversations were stimulating.

" _Turn right. The apartment number is one-one-six._ "

Erik obeyed X's instructions without question, that feeling he'd had before, the feeling of excitement, of _purpose_ , growing stronger with every move he made and every word he heard.

He was in a residential area, and the first tall apartment block he passed had the numbers '180-199' nailed to the front door. He ran past that building quickly, to the next one, which was '160-179' and didn't bother to look at the next two he passed.

The fifth building along comprised of apartments '100-119'; a building that required no more than a simple key to get in—and Erik's gift was a key that opened every lock. The interior was plain and worn; not a total shithole by any means, but not much effort had been made to make it anything more than an 'acceptable' place for a person of reasonable common sense to live in. There was a light switch—not needed, given it was already morning—a smoke alarm, and two doors; one marked '100', the other '110'.

"Sixth floor?" he deduced quickly.

" _Valid. User action required."_

Erik still didn't see any need for him to be running, or putting any more speed into his actions than before; as far as he could tell there was no one following him, and no reason this crappy little apartment should provide him any more cover than the nearest sheltered bus stop. Nor, for that matter, any reason why apartment 116 should be his safe haven any more than any of the other two hundred identical apartments on this street.

All the same, he floated himself up to the sixth floor rather than run up the old fashioned way, heedless of whoever saw him. That might have been counter-productive to hiding, but Erik refused to hide his powers when he wasn't under some sort of cover.

Then, with the green, paint-peeling door labelled '116' directly in front of his eyes, he heard a terrible choking wail that set his teeth on edge and stopped him in his tracks.

There was a baby crying in that apartment. And before he could ask X what that was about—

"SHUT UP! JUST SHUT THE HELL UP, GOD DAMN IT, WHAT THE FUCK DO YOU WANT FROM ME!?"

\--came from the same location.

The first impulse Erik felt was that he should leave immediately—that this was a place he should not be. He even took a step back towards the stairs before X's voice stopped him.

" _Violence imminent. User action required_."

But still there was no threat anywhere Erik could see it.

"I don't know if it's escaped your notice, X, but that apartment is already occupied."

The baby's screams intensified. The woman's likewise.

"STOP IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!"

Erik took another step back.

" _Violence imminent. User action required._ "

There was urgency in X's voice that time, no mistaking it. Was that something he could affect after calculating the probability that mimicking human emotions would affect Erik? Or—

"FINE! FINE, I'VE HAD ENOUGH OF YOU, YOU FUCKING PIECE OF SHIT!"

Something breakable collided violently with something hard within the walls before him, and that was when Erik realised why he was really there.

For those next few moments the realisation happened at the back of his mind, however. In the foreground, he made no further analysis of the situation before wrenching the door open with his powers and storming inside.

The apartment was a mess; books, DVDs, CDs all piled high beside similarly tall stacks of soiled dishes, towering over clothes strewn on a floor caked with clumps of dust and dirt. The curtains were closed, the light seemed to come solely from a laptop that was on a desk in the room through the doorway on Erik's right, a doorway he crossed without another thought.

" _Left bedroom_ ," X told him.

Erik leapt over the clutter of the room so hastily he almost tripped, and slammed his hand against the far wall for support before shoving the door on the left open.

The woman who presumably lived in the apartment turned her head around to meet her green and dark-ringed eyes with his, looked terrified, but didn't lift the pillow off the baby's face.

There was a terrible fraction of a second that Erik stood there stunned into non-action, while the woman made a strangled noise and looked down as if to try and see what she might have been doing that had caused a stranger to come bursting into her home like this.

As if she didn't really understand what might have alerted him to trouble.

And Erik almost forgot he even had powers when he backhanded her against the dresser opposite the crib, dropping his cell phone and knocking her so violently into the iron mirror stand on top of the dresser that the glass fell out of its frame and down the back of the drawers where it shattered with an almighty crash.

Mercifully, the baby started crying again as soon as she (it was dressed all in pink, Erik assumed it was a 'she') heard the loud noise. Erik rushed towards her on instinct to make sure she was all right; as if he'd have been able to tell a god damn thing—shoving the pillow out of the way, picking her up and cradling her head to his chest.

In an absurd turn of events, the dazed mother pushed herself away from the dresser, knocking several toiletries off the top and screamed, "GET AWAY FROM MY BABY!"

On this occasion Erik wasn't thinking clearly enough to truly appreciate the stupidity of that demand. With his hands full of the baby he used his powers instead to take hold of the iron frame the mirror had been held in, warp it out of the pretty leaf pattern that had been shaped into its borders and into what for him was a far more pleasing sight: a metal coil, constricted around the woman like a snake, from the fingertips it trapped against her upper thighs to the wide band he used to cover her mouth.

He relished the way her eyes widened with horror when she realised what he was.

Her superior.

Her _judgement_.

Then he let her flop to the floor, smacking her cheek against the knob on one of the dressers as she went down and backed out of the room, fusing the door shut behind him.

 

*~*~*

 

...

...

[OPENING FILES]

...

[ACCESSING RECORDS]

[19/03/2013/AUDIO RECORDING/WILLIAMSTRYKER/BOLIVARTRASK/05:38/]

...

...

TRASK: William. Any news?

...

STRYKER: We picked the bus up just outside the Bronx; no sign of Magneto. Wolverine and his companions are also in the wind.

...

TRASK: I don't suppose we know anything about said companions. SHIELD?

...

STRYKER: Whoever they are it doesn't matter. We have full authorisation from General Ross to be carrying out this operation.

...

TRASK: Maybe so, but SHIELD lost control of this self same operation for less of a misstep than this might prove to be if the council finds out how far out of our control it's gotten. And things will be worse still if they find out about the bargain you made with Essex.

...

STRYKER: I get the feeling you have a suggestion, Doctor Trask? At least, I damn well hope you do.

...

TRASK: As it so happens, I've been going over the footage from the library, and I think we may have one chip left to bargain with.

...

STRYKER: Bargain? With who? Every other side in this is composed of mutants—you can't think we—

...

TRASK: I think, Colonel, that with Cerebro in the hands of Magneto, or with Sinister should he manage to find Magneto before we do, the fate of our species is looking just a little grim. Fortunately our software revealed something very interesting when facial recognition of the mutants present at the library was run.

...

STYKER: Facial recognition? You mean we can identify them?

...

TRASK: Except for the leader; the one with the blue fur? Yes. The Caucasian male with the red plasma bolts is an ex-CIA operative by the name of Alex Summers. The two with the police-issue lasers are indeed members of the police, NYPD homicide detectives. However, it is the blue woman with whom I have the most interest.

...

STRYKER: What, the naked lizard-woman?

...

TRASK: Exquisite, isn't she? She's most commonly known as 'Mystique', but her birth name is Raven Darkhomle... and her adopted name is Raven Xavier.

...

STRYKER: Xavier? As in...

...

TRASK: As in someone who might be interested in certain information we have about what's going on in Sinister's lab. Right now we still have Cerebro, and after midnight tonight the access Magneto has will be shut off. As long as we keep him, Essex, and Wolverine from it until then, we're home safe.

...

STRYKER: And Wolverine's faction will work with us against the other two in exchange for information about Essex.

...

TRASK: Precisely.

...

STRYKER: I have to say, Doc, I like how your mind works. Though I am curious—do we actually know what's going on in Sinister's lab?

...

...

[CALL ENDED 05:41]

...

 

*~*~*

 

"No. No way, no how—we are not letting you do this!"

Darwin's face contorted with rage as he made an aborted attempt to put a hand on Summers' shoulder (for camaraderie or to restrain him, Logan didn't know) but then thought better of it and just clenched his fists.

"We may have no other choice, Darwin" said McCoy, slightly off to the side from the others on the bench they'd sat him on to put a salve on his leg-wound. "It won't be long before Magneto realises what he has in his possession, and if he can access Cerebro's core programming—use it to gain any and all information on us, on our allies, on our enemies... well, the simple fact is that no man can be trusted with that kind of power, let alone a homicidal fanatic."

He paused to wipe his glasses, and to let that sink in with the rest of the group, though only Logan and Summers knew what he meant. Then he took a deep breath.

"But make no mistake; the chances that we will suffer reprisals for what we have to do are extremely high. Because of that, I think it's best I did this next part alone."

He looked pointedly at Logan and Summers for that last part, and it seemed to shock Summers at the very least; but then, for someone with such an impressive light show, the kid wasn't the brightest bulb in the box. Logan could have told you from the beginning that McCoy would try to pull a stunt like that.

"No way, Hank," said Summers. "Wolverine can do whatever he wants, but I'm not letting you go in there alone."

"I'll be all right, Alex," McCoy tried to assure him. The effect was somewhat ruined with the pained wince he made when he moved his leg, and Logan felt another spike of loathing for Sinister—the kind of spike you could only get rid of when you shoved in into someone else's eye.

"You need to get to a hospital," Summers insisted.

McCoy shook his head. "I'm sure Stark and SHIELD will take care of that. I don't know what's going to happen, Alex, but in the event that we do prevent Mr. Eisenhardt from making any changes to Cerebro, I need to know that you and Logan will be around to take care of the numbers."

Right about then was when Logan couldn't keep quiet anymore.

"Uh-huh," he said. "And who'll be paying us to do that if Nick Fury decides he wants a furry blue rug to decorate his office? I didn't get into this gig for free, bub."

"Can I interrupt to say I have no idea what anyone is talking about?" asked Salvadore, leant back against her car with her arms crossed and her eyes rolling.

Summers glared at her, hissed "Shut up, Angel," and turned back to McCoy. "Okay, here's what we're going to do. Darwin; you and Angel here are going to go back to the precinct and concentrate on bringing down HC. I know you want to help us, but I also know you want justice for Riptide, and we know HC will be going after Frost next. No matter what the outcome of our overture to the Avengers is, someone has to be there to take care of that."

Logan could tell pretty much there and then that Darwin was going to capitulate; much as he was anything but a dog that did whatever Summers told him to do, in this case doing as Summers had said was his duty. And after all, he wouldn't have been Darwin if he didn't do what was right, no matter how much it pained him. Still, even Logan found himself intimidated by the look of fury on the other man's face.

Then Darwin just shook his head.

"Always got to be the Lone Ranger, Summers," he remarked. "Martyr without a cause, is that it?"

"I have a cause, Armando," Summers replied with a genuine smile. "And besides, I'll have Hank with me. What possible trouble could we run into?"

Darwin snorted. "Yeah, I saw how well he handled trouble back at the library. Tell me, McCoy, have you ever even _seen_ a weapon before?"

McCoy blushed. None of the others would have noticed it beneath the blue fur, but Logan could smell the extra blood going into his face. It was kind of cute.

"If you're done having eye-sex with Detective Munoz," he interrupted, just a bit gleefully, "I was wondering what you had planned for me, Summers? Because I'll tell you one thing—I _ain't_ going to be looking after the dog."

(Who was he kidding? He loved that dog).

"Of course not, Logan," Summers said, grinning back. "If we don't make it, that will be Angel's job."

"Hey!" said Salvadore.

"In the mean time, when the dust clears, you'll be a free man. I'm sure Hank's set you up with a nice pension plan."

Logan was sure he had too. But he resented the implication that Summers actually took Logan's constant insisting that he was only doing this job for the money seriously.

Because of course he did it for more than the money.

There was also the snacks.

And the dog.

"I go," he snarled, "where I _wanna_ go. And right now, I wanna pay me a visit to a certain tin man who can get us in contact with the Cyclops who knows where Cerebro's hardware is, so I can meet Magneto there and make him into a minced pie."

He unsheathed his claws for emphasis. Summers was still grinning.

"I'm sure Magneto will be thrilled to see you."

"Are you sure, Logan?" McCoy asked. "You don't have to do this."

Logan just gave him a look.

"He's sure," said Summers.

With a snort, Logan drew his claws back into his knuckles and enjoyed the silent moment of... _camaraderie_ , he supposed you'd call it—though it brought up images of Frost's scar-faced red devil calling all and sundry his 'comrades' while he held his stupid tail around their necks. Why were they rushing in to save _them_ , again? Hell, they should have called in one of the five million favours Frost owed them just for letting her live all this time and get some of her psychic mumbo-jumbo to help them into Stark Tower.

But no, they were doing this the romantic-cowboy way instead. Three brave men standing against the world and all that crap.

(Much like the dog, Logan loved all that crap).

"Great," said Salvadore. "Well, now all that is decided—and without any say on my part, I might add—Darwin and I'll just go off and let HC plug us with enough lead to shield a small city from nuclear attack, and you three can get caught trying to sneak into the Avengers' HQ and spend the rest of your lives being experimented on in Guantanamo Bay. And there I thought usually your plans were so airtight."

Darwin grabbed Salvadore's upper arm and tugged her none-too-gently towards their squad car.

"Come on, Salvadore," he sighed. "Let's go do our job."

"Yeah, well, don't expect me to be at your beck and call after this one, bozo," Salvadore called towards Summers as she pulled the door open. "What with how I'll be being pushing up daisies from a shallow grave and all."

"At least you'll be protected from nuclear attack," Logan told her cheekily.

Salvadore glared and got into the passenger seat of the car, slamming the door behind her. Darwin lingered around the other side for a moment, eyes glued on Summers, before shaking his head in resignation again.

"You watch yourselves," he said.

"You watch Frost," Summers returned.

For a second there Darwin looked like he wanted to say more, but he held himself back from it and instead got into the car. There was a small clap of thunder just as the door closed, which seemed especially ominous given that the sky wasn't that grey, but somehow it only made Logan smile.

The NYPD squad car drove off after that, leaving Logan, Summers and McCoy standing where there would have been a shadow of the imposing Stark Tower if there'd been a sun to cast it. In all honesty he wasn't happy about Darwin and Salvadore going after HC, especially for the sake of Frost and her lackeys, (well, Darwin at least—the way he heard it Salvadore was a former member of HC and had pretty much gotten herself into this mess). But however right it did or didn't seem, it was their job, and there was a kind of... _honour_ , he guessed, in fulfilling their duty like that.

Ah, what was he griping about? Darwin adapted to survive; that was kind of his thing. He'd be all right. And Salvadore certainly knew how to take care of herself.

Logan's own job lay before him with a shitload of probably major consequences attached to its success or failure. He'd never thought of himself as the guy who risked his own life to save the world, or even the guy who risked his own life to stand by his companions, but he knew he was the kind of guy who couldn't lie down and do nothing while fucking Magneto of all people now had the ability to control practically all information everywhere, and the will to use it for fuck knows what crazy scheme he'd come up with once he realised what he had.

Fucking Magneto. What a stupid name.

"They'll be all right, Hank," Summers said, looking at the worried way McCoy's furry brow had furrowed.

"Yeah, well. I hope so."

McCoy's face screwed up further as he suddenly made the effort to stand up from the public bench and put some small weight on his wounded leg—only a bit worse than a graze from the looks of it, but it still made Logan want to rip Sinister's guts out.

A few people turned their heads, and most turned away immediately after (got to love New Yorkers) but one or two were looking hard enough to see that McCoy was blue and furry under the hooded sweatshirt. Logan growled and tried to ignore them though; there was no way of knowing what was going on in any of their heads and no real point in trying to guess. The most any civilian would try to pull out here was some no-doubt-hilarious slur thrown over their shoulder and frankly the three of them had bigger things to worry about.

"So, what's the plan, Brainy Smurf?" he asked.

Proving that point, McCoy didn't even seem to notice the 'endearment'.

"The only people who might be able to help us are SHIELD," he said. "They were the organisation I originally sold Cerebro to when it was first completed back in late 2006. Unfortunately, when SHIELD failed to identify Obadiah Stane as a threat to national security even after his number came up, the system was put under new management."

"Stryker," Logan hissed.

McCoy nodded. "Cerebro had reported Stane and Tony Stark's numbers concurrently, and SHIELD assumed they were both being targeted, not that the one was trying to kill the other. The fallout from Stane's rampage through the city was a PR nightmare, and someone in power made a bad decision because of it. The point is, SHIELD is our only hope of finding out where Cerebro's hardware is stored."

"And Tony Stark is our way into SHIELD," finished Summers.

"Yeah? How's that figure?" Logan asked them.

Both of his colleagues looked somewhat annoyed.

"Stark's number came up again not too long ago," said Summers. "Hank put me on the case and... well, he was a handful."

"That's putting it mildly," growled McCoy. "He almost blew our entire operation."

Logan grinned. "Let me get this straight," he said. "Your two-man makeshift vigilante circus operating out of a closed down public library was _almost_ blown wide open by a billionaire genius superhero with ties to government agencies and a legion of hi-tech lackeys at his disposal? Say it ain't so, Beast."

"The point," McCoy continued, rolling his eyes, "Is that not only am I worried that there'll be no way of keeping the existence of Cerebro from him after this, I'm also worried we won't get past the front door without his security picking us up and locking us down. They're already on high alert and I'm sure Alex's face at least has been flagged on his system."

"On the other hand," said Summers, "If we do go in there openly we'll probably grab his attention enough that he'd be willing to talk to us."

"That's if whatever security picks us up decides he needs to be made aware of it," McCoy reminded him.

"Don't worry," said Tony Stark, standing right next to them. "I have a little notation next to your names that I'm to be informed immediately if either of you show up again."

So focused had Logan been on paying attention to what McCoy was saying that he hadn't noticed that the smell of Armani and overpriced cologne one of the many passers-by was wafting all over the place had lingered behind them along with the man wearing them. Tony Stark himself—every bit the arrogant, irritating little shit that you couldn't escape from in the media if his grand entrance was anything to judge him by. Tailored charcoal-grey suit, tinted sunglasses even on a cloudy day; he wagged his eyebrows with a playful smile when the three men before him started at his intrusion.

Really. Logan had to be losing his touch to let a smarmy, pampered little shit like this sneak up on him.

Loathe to let the asshole think it put him in control of the situation, of course, Logan crossed his forearms in front of his chest and forced his claws out through the skin of his knuckles, making Stark's eyes widen comically. His jaw dropped halfway and he held his index finger up towards them.

"Don't know _you_ though," he said, glancing over Logan with a mix of awe and creeped-out. "Sure I'd love to, of course. Very... nice..." He was gesturing at the claws with his wrist flicking about in circles, "Are those a mutation or the fruits of blessed science?"

" _These_ are what's going to be carving you up like a Christmas turkey if you try anything funny, bub."

Stark opened the palm of his hand and raised the other one to join it in surrender. "Me? Funny? Noooo—well, on occasions I am the soul of wit but right now as I understand it you're in some trouble, and honestly what is Tony Stark if not helpful to his friends?"

He sounded the same as he did on TV, using the same 'inane babbling' tone of voice, but Logan could sense his heart beating faster and smell the fear that was beginning to creep onto him and he felt better for it.

What made him feel less certain was the lack of familiarity on his part with how Stark might treat this situation. McCoy and Summers had done a solid for him once, sure; but how many times had they stepped in to stop HC or the Mob from taking out Frost, and what did they have to show for that but a conscience that in Logan's case at least would have been fine even with a few drops of her bleach-white blood on it?

Stark was also an Avenger, but he'd hardly shown himself to be perfect in his exploits as national hero. Petty. Abrasive. Alcoholic. Reckless. Oh, he'd flown a nuke into a wormhole and all (" _Think Cerebro predicted all these aliens, Hank_?") and rescued the President from some mad scientist terrorist supervillain (honestly, Logan hadn't been paying much attention to all that), but Logan couldn't disagree with McCoy when he said that if Stark saw Cerebro—he'd want it.

On first glance he looked like he was playing a game. But that was only first glance, and annoyingly, that was the only glance they'd had time for so far.

Logan was just going to have to keep his claws sharp.

"Your security picked us up just standing here," McCoy observed. "That's pretty impressive."

Stark removed his sunglasses, which was a good idea because in this weather they made him look like an idiot.

"Yes, well, in all fairness I actually came out here 'cause I had a call from Raven saying you'd be dropping by."

Raven? Who the hell was Raven, and how the fuck did she know what she knew!?

"Mystique?" McCoy blurted out.

Oh, _her_. Damn scaly-blue lizard woman and her billion contacts. God only knows how she knew Stark of all people. Would have been nice of her to say something about it before they'd dropped her off at the bus station.

Summers seemed to concur.

"I won't ask how you two ended up on first name basis," he muttered.

"It's nothing like _that_ ," Stark insisted. "Although if I was a free man and she didn't refuse non-mutants on principle... anyway, her family worked with my dad back in the day and her brother was a good friend of mine."

A strange look came over McCoy's face, and he cast his eyes downwards.

"I'm sorry," he said.

There. You couldn't miss the genuine feeling that sprang into Stark's eyes at those two words. If Logan had paid closer attention he'd have heard it waiting in the wings in the all-too-casual mention of 'her brother', whoever he had been. It didn't take either of the two rocket scientists present to understand what his being spoken of in the past tense implied.

What was interesting to Logan was how someone like Stark had to take a deep breath just because of that. You wouldn't have thought grief had a smell, but it did; an unmistakable scent that just couldn't be hidden by the cologne. He had meant it when he'd said 'good friend'.

"Yes, well..." he trailed off. Whoever Mystique's brother had been he'd been a good enough friend to Stark that his mere memory could render the man speechless for a good three seconds before he found a line to follow. "These things happen, as I'm so often told by the people I pay to worry about me. Either way, if you're a friend of Raven's then you deserve an audience. The whole saving my life that one time also helped."

"Two times," said Summers.

Stark blinked. "That's what she said," he replied.

"Actually, Mr. Stark," McCoy said, considerably louder than he'd been speaking before, "The reason we wanted to talk to you is because we need to be in contact with Nick Fury, and you were the only person we could think of who could contact SHIELD, especially in its current state."

Logan tried not to relish the genuine shock that Stark displayed when he heard that.

"And why, exactly, would you think that guy would want to talk to me, let alone you?"

"Because, Mr. Stark, within the next—" McCoy checked his watch, "—seventeen and a half hours, the entire world may very well be in the hands of a fanatical mutant supremacist who once abducted me and jammed a pen through my hand just because he was curious about our operation. And that would be bad."

There was a long pause.

"Well," said Stark. "I guess now I can understand why you didn't want me curious about your operation. If it helps, I can promise you I'm not the pen-through-hand kind of guy. I mean, I might take a few measurements; I just know merchandising would love to add a blue fuzz plush-toy to the line—"

"End of the world, Stark," grumbled Summers.

Stark tilted his hand from side to side. "Sounds more like domination of the world. Probably still not a good thing, but you never know. Maybe we'll welcome our new mutant overlords."

"Oh, I'll be welcoming Magneto, all right," Logan muttered. "With a steel claw to the balls."

Stark laughed. "This guy calls himself 'Magneto'?"

"It's not the guy we're worried about," said McCoy. "Though even alone he is dangerous. But he now has access to a system that, in the world of digital information, may be practically all-powerful. And once he realises this there's no telling what he might do."

Unsurprisingly, Stark was intrigued enough by the idea of an 'all-powerful system' that the look in his eyes became completely serious, even if his reply was one of disbelief.

"You'll forgive me if I find it hard to believe that anyone has devised a system more powerful than mine," he told McCoy.

"Honestly I don't expect you to take my word for it just like that, Mr. Stark. But I can guarantee you that all you'd need to do is mention the phrase 'Northern Lights' to Fury and he'd ask to talk to me as soon as he could." He paused. "Or possibly have me killed. But I'd hope you wouldn't do that."

"I generally don't commit murder purely on Nick Fury's say-so," Stark assured them.

Then he waited.

And waited.

And Logan began to get the idea that he was waiting for something in particular; something or someone to show up and take care of this problem for him, something he'd been buying time for, stalling for with his incessant quips and boasting... Logan prepared to release his claws yet again until Stark saw his hand move and panicked.

"Whoah, whoah, whoah—I thought we were getting along, uh... don't think I caught your name—"

"The only thing you'll ever need to call me is _'Uncle_ '."

"...okay? Anyway, just wait a second, I need to—yeah? JARVIS? What have you—? What?"

He was talking to his own AI then. Logan looked to McCoy to see if he had an opinion on this, but McCoy just shook his head and Summers pointedly folded his arms as if to tell McCoy he trusted his judgement.

Logan didn't raise his hands any further than they were. That was what trust meant to him.

"What, nothing? That can't be..." Stark's eyes snapped towards McCoy. "Are you making this up? Because JARVIS has full access to SHIELD and he says he can't find any relevant mention of 'Northern Lights' in their entire database."

McCoy shook his head.

"It's not in a database, Mr. Stark, the information was much too sensitive for that—it was supposed to be that less than ten people in the whole world knew that it existed. There's no paper trail, and there's certainly no electronic trail."

"If we're talking about a machine that deals in information then there has to be an electronic trail!" insisted Stark, and a little desperately too.

"Not if the machine cleans its tracks well enough."

"It couldn't be sophisticated enough to hide its tracks from JARVIS."

"It's... more sophisticated than you know." Logan couldn't miss the hint of shame in McCoy's voice there. _Not your fault, Beastie_ , he thought to himself. McCoy went on, "You have to believe me, Mr. Stark—this is how we knew you were in danger, and this is how we know the world is in danger now. We need to talk to Nick Fury, he's the only man alive that might be able to tell us where Cerebro is before it's too late."

Stark was still and silent for a long moment, and this time obviously wasn't waiting for anything, he was just stuck.

Then Summers had his go at convincing the man to play ball.

"You can ask Raven if she thinks we're trustworthy," he said. "We've bailed her out of a tight spot before. You've always known Hank and I had something up our sleeves—we're telling you now; this is it. The world is in a lot of danger, and not just from Magneto but from others who are after the same system. We need your help."

Again, Stark stood there.

And stood there.

And stood there.

And sighed.

"Well," he said, surveying the three of them one last time. "I guess you'd better come in. Fury's been crashing since the Triskellion, well, _crashed_. I'll set you all up with some visitor's passes."

The relief in McCoy's face was so profound, and from such a normally reserved young man, that it really drove home just how important all this was.

Logan had never been tech-savvy. Not a bit of it.

But even he could appreciate the kind of chaos Magneto could wreak with Cerebro under his full control. The bulk of the world's wealth at his disposal. All the world's information at his fingertips, and the power to change that information into whatever he saw fit—probably going a little further than permanently editing the Wikipedia article on mutants. World communication at his beck and call.

He'd have access to the names of everyone who'd ever said an unkind word about mutants online and the means to paint a target on their backs. Logan had no love lost for most of those people, but they certainly didn't deserve judgement at Magneto's hands.

And Logan still needed to make that maniac pay for what he'd done to McCoy.

So he clapped Stark on the back cheerfully.

"Glad you decided to see things our way," he hissed into the man's ear. "Just keep in mind that if you speak a word of this to anyone, these claws work wonders as a metal can-opener."

Stark frowned.

"This is so weird," he said. "I mean, I deal with weird on a regular basis, and this might be the ultimate weirdness even for me... but I think I really, _really_ like you."

Summers grinned.

"Most people do," he said.

Logan unsheathed both middle claws at once.

 

*~*~*

 


End file.
